Helen Smith has written a very entertaining work that is also piercing in its insight in her book Being Light.
The satire about “Cool Britannia” opens with Roy Travers inflating a bouncy castle at a charity carnival. The castle gets caught in the breeze and takes flight. Roy continues to float until the castle loses air and lands on a bucolic farm. When a woman informs him he is Paradise, Roy concludes that he has died and gone to heaven.
He is, in fact, in the hideaway of a former circus performer who is concealing a stolen elephant. Meanwhile, Roy’s wife Sheila is convinced Roy has neither died nor run away with another woman and she is picking up signals from aliens about his location.
Being Light is populated by a large but manageable cast of characters whose relationship with one another is slowly revealed throughout the book. They include the Mrs. Ellington, the private investigator Sheila hired to help find Roy; a famous animal trainer; jaded journalist Jane Memory; Jeremy, a dedicated young activist who is trying to stop the traffic.
With a light touch, Smith exposes some sad truths of modern life. One character is obsessed with classifications and labels, vowing, “If I know as much as possible about everything then every choice I make will be informed.”
She also deftly weaves issues of animal rights and the role of men in modern society into the surreal mystery. One character notes that men aren’t necessary any more and will only be valued as long as they are exotically different from women.
The plot feels a bit disjointed at times and I was hoping for more of crescendo at the end. But for this genre which was not my usual fare, I found it quite enjoyable. It is available for only £0.77 today in the Amazon Kindle store.
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Is the meaning of life to find the meaning of life? Meet Sherry Cracker: loner, obsessive note-taker and lover of tartan trousers. She works for thrifty, straight-talking Mr. Chin who runs a business buying used gold from dentists. One Friday afternoon, Mr. Chin informs Sherry that she’s abnormal. He then uncharacteristically gives her £100 and a weekend in which to ‘crack the normality nut’.
But something is going on in the town where unemployment is high and the streets bristle with CCTV cameras. The corrupt council has cut budgets and the library has been closed. Mysterious graffiti is appearing everywhere. People are disgruntled and restless. Sherry is joined on her quest by a runaway known as the ‘Little Bastard’ and Jocelyn de Foiegras, gentleman alcoholic, and his Chihuahua, Herb Alpert. Through their friendship she learns that she’s looking for normality in all the wrong places and uncovers a plot which threatens her future with Mr Chin.An outsider, Sherry sees life in post-industrial Britain through the eyes of an innocent and records her findings in her trusty OBSERVATIONS folder.
Her journey of discovery is both hilarious and poignant, one that takes you to the heart of ‘normal’ British life. Packed to the gills with quirky characters and comical twist and turns, Sherry Cracker Gets Normal will make you fall in love with Sherry and have you pondering the meaning of life one moment and laughing uproariously the next. Enjoy a good laugh while reading this book when you download it today for £3.99.
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Free now: The Lady of Bolton Hill from Bethany House, a faith-based publisher.
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Female journalists are rare in 1879, but American-born Clara Endicott has finally made a name for herself with her provocative articles championing London’s poor. When the backlash from her work forces a return home to Baltimore, Clara finds herself face-to-face with a childhood sweetheart who is no longer the impoverished factory worker she once knew. In her absence, Daniel Tremain has become a powerful industry giant and Clara finds him as enigmatic as ever. However, Daniel’s success is fueled by resentment from past wounds and Clara’s deeply-held beliefs about God’s grace force Daniel to confront his own motives. When Clara’s very life is endangered by one of Daniel’s adversaries, they must face a reckoning neither of them ever could have foreseen.
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Cassie settled down too young, marrying her first serious boyfriend. Now, ten years later, she is betrayed and broken. With her marriage in tatters and no career or home of her own, she needs to work out where she belongs in the world and who she really is. So begins a year-long trial as Cassie leaves her sheltered life in rural Scotland to stay with each of her best friends in the most glamorous cities in the world: New York, Paris and London. Exchanging grouse moor and mousy hair for low-carb diets and high-end highlights, Cassie tries on each city for size as she attempts to track down the life she was supposed to have been leading, and with it, the man who was supposed to love her all along. Read this book today for £2.79.
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Escaping New York for the beautiful Irish Isle seemed the best way to escape the past for NYPD detective Joe Lucchesi and his family. But following the death of a girl in the local village, Joe soon finds out that the killer is closer to his past than he would care to remember. From a broken childhood comes an unbreakable and deadly bond.
In 1985 in a North Texas backwater, two teenage boys made a chilling pact that would unite them forever in a dark and twisted loyalty. Now one lies dead. And the man responsible is going to pay. When a routine investigation comes to a violent and tragic end, Detective Joe Lucchesi takes leave from the NYPD and moves with his wife and son to a quiet village on the south east coast of Ireland. They’re happy. They’re safe. And they’re about to enter a nightmare more terrifying than the one they left behind.
When a young girl goes missing and the village closes ranks, Detective Lucchesi sets out to find the truth and uncovers a sinister trail that leads from the other side of the Atlantic and cuts directly to the very heart of his family. His wife is lying. His son is lying. And a killer is lying in wait. Buy this suspenseful novel for only £1.99 today.
Broken hearts and shattered dreams are just the beginning for three women searching for love and God’s purpose in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains . . . In Rekindled, Kathryn Jennings would give anything to turn back time and be able to love her husband for the man he was instead of pining for the man she always wanted him to be.
Annabelle Grayson has been given a second chance at life in Revealed, but is the painful effect of Matthew Taylor’s bitter resentment to high a price to pay? In Remembered, Veronique Girard has reluctantly traveled from France to America to honor her mother’s final request. But her search for her father may cost her the respect of the man she has come to admire. These romances sell individually for £6.83 or more – you get all three in this one e-book bundle for £9.71.
The Stumpwork Robe: (£0.86) No one would believe that a tragedy to rival Romeo and Juliet could be hidden beneath the embroidery of a rare gown. If the writer is found out, she could be killed.
Adelina the Traveller, skilled embroiderer, creates a treasure hunt across her robe. In a world eerily like our own, where enchanted Others weave through the weft of life, Adelina places her own existence on the line in order to condemn her gaoler to a death sentence. This is the story of The Stumpwork Robe…
The Last Stitch: (£0.86) Amongst the embroidery on a coveted gown, there is a secret story that is tragic and shocking in its scope. A story of revenge, a story of friendships lost, a story of love and the cruel machinations of enchanted Others who weave in and out of mortal lives like a needle through fabric. The Last Stitch is the conclusion to the story begun in The Stumpwork Robe. Considered to be a cross between Neil Gaiman’s Stardust and John Crowley’s Little Big, the novels reveal the dark side of the Fey, a side that gives a new meaning to the word ‘fairytale’.
Now at a lower price:
61 Hours (£4.09) ended with maverick loner Jack Reacher trapped in a desperate situation from which escape seemed impossible. Even for him. But Reacher has done the impossible before.
Now there’s deadly trouble in the wilds of Nebraska…and Reacher walks right into it. First he falls foul of the Duncans, a local clan that has terrified an entire county into submission. But it’s the unsolved case of a missing eight-year-old girl, already decades-old, that Reacher can’t let go.
The Duncans want Reacher gone—or dead. And it’s not just past secrets they’re trying to hide. They’re awaiting a secret shipment that’s already late—and they have the kind of customers no one can afford to annoy. For as dangerous as the Duncans are, they’re just the bottom of a criminal food chain stretching halfway around the world. Reacher – bruised and battered – should have just kept on going. But for Reacher, that was impossible. By this suspenseful mystery by Lee Child today for £2.79.
Free now: Two Christian fiction novels from Summerside Press, a faith-based publisher.
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Sons of Thunder: Sophie Frangos is torn between the love of two men and the promise that binds them all together. Markos Stavros loves Sophie fraom afar while battling his thirst for vengeance and his hunger for honor. Dino, his quiet and intelligent brother, simply wants to forget the horror that drove them from their Greek island home to start a new life in America. One of these “sons of thunder” offers a future she longs for, the other–the past she lost. From the sultry Chicago jazz clubs of the roaring twenties to World War II battlefields of Europe to a final showdown in a Greek island village, they’ll discover betrayal, sacrifice, and finally redemption. Most of all, when Sophie is forced to make her choice, she’ll learn that God honors the promises made by the Sons of Thunder.
Love Finds You in Homestead, Iowa: Times are hard in 1894. Desperate for work, former banker Jacob Hirsch rides the rails west from Chicago with his four-year-old daughter, Cassie. When a life-threatening illness strands the pair in Homestead, Iowa, the local Amana villagers welcome the father and daughter into their peaceful society. Liesel, a young Amana woman, nurses Cassie back to health, and the Homestead elders offer Jacob work. But Jacob’s growing interest in Liesel complicates his position in the Amanas. Will he fight to stay in the only place that feels like home, even if it means giving up the woman he loves? Or will Liesel leave her beloved community to face the outside world with Jacob and Cassie at her side?
Free now: Contemporary Fiction
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